Tim Lebbon - Kong - Skull Island

She felt excited, not scared. For her, lately, that was an unusual experience on a photograph assignment. There was something very liberating and freeing about taking pictures of explosions not designed to kill, but to discover.

She glanced back at Conrad, still sat in the doorway and staring down at the blasts. He looked worried. Maybe his fear of flying went deeper than she thought. He sensed her watching and looked at her.

“Gonna make a nice brochure,” she said, lifting her camera and taking a shot of him.

Another explosion erupted outside, but this one was different. It started low and grew, rather than fading from an initial loud blast to mere echoes. She saw in Conrad’s reaction that he sensed the same difference, and both of them leaned closer to the doorway, Weaver hanging onto one of the straps swinging from the ceiling.

“What the hell…?” he said, but if anyone heard him they did not respond.

The roar continued, swamping echoes from the seismic charges, growing, loud and primal like the island shaking itself awake and angry at their intrusion.

Looking down towards the drop zones, and at the three Hueys circling the smoking remains of the initial explosions, they both saw the shape flung from deep down in the jungle canopy.

Conrad tensed beside her, and Weaver heard a pilot’s panicked shout: “Incoming!”

The massive splintered tree trunk struck a Huey head-on, shattering the cabin, spearing the chopper and making minced meat of the pilot, sending the aircraft into a spiralling, deathly spin.

“Delayed explosion?” Weaver asked.

“That was no explosion,” Conrad said, and that made no sense, she couldn’t comprehend what he meant. No explosion? Then how?

Frightened voices merged over the radio, a chaos of confusion that sang the chopper down to its fiery, terrible end.

“Fox One is hit and down!” someone shouted.

Weaver felt Conrad grasping her arm as if keen to hold onto reality. She held onto her camera.

The thing she saw rise from the jungle canopy and smash down a second Huey looked like a giant black hand.

The chopper span from the impact, one rotor spinning off into the air. Weaver saw a shape fall from the open doorway and plummet, limbs waving as it disappeared into the suddenly deadly jungle. The out-of-control Huey ploughed its way down towards the canopy. The pilot struggled to retain altitude, but it was a lost cause.

“Mayday, mayday, we’re going down!” he shouted over the radio.

Conrad clasped her harder, half-standing and pulling himself closer.

“You seeing this?”

“Yeah, but not believing.”

The Huey jarred to a halt, as if held upright above the canopy by heavy tree limbs. Watching from their own circling chopper, Weaver dared to hope that the survivors on board might be saved. One man clung to a landing strut, arms and legs wrapped tightly around the support, probably trying to make sense of his miraculous escape.

The jungle beneath the halted helicopter burst apart as a huge, dark shape rose up from below the trees, standing from a deep crevasse and thrusting the crippled aircraft aloft in one giant hand. Smashed trees and a million shed leaves floated around it as Weaver tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Some sort of sense that might pin her to the world, the reality she knew.

But she could find none.

The shape was a massive, impossible gorilla, perhaps a hundred feet tall. It shook the stricken Huey it held in one mighty hand, and as she saw the man tumble from the landing gear and drop into the beast’s open, roaring mouth, she felt a cool flush of utter terror go through her, chilling her heart and flooding her stomach with ice.

She sat down heavily next to Conrad, camera forgotten, everything forgotten other than what she was witnessing at that moment. She had no history and no future, only this dreadful, impossible present.

Weaver struggled to remember her name.

Conrad knew what would happen next. A year ago he’d have done the same. But this was not a war, and this was not an enemy. At least, nothing like any enemy man had faced before. He didn’t know what this was. But he had to put the fear and confusion in the background if they were going to get past this moment in one piece.

Packard and the rest of his Sky Devils went into combat mode.

The colonel shouted from his Huey, “Fox Six on guard! Fox Five is down, Fox Four is down! Respond, Fox Three!”

Conrad saw several Hueys scatter and twist like panicked birds, their pilots taking classic evasive manoeuvres. Trouble was, no one knew exactly what they were trying to evade, or what that giant thing was going to do next.

As Cole dropped into formation with the other Sky Devils and flew towards the towering beast, the creature seemed to rise and rise, so high that it eventually blocked out the sun.

“What the hell is that?” Mills asked, saying what everyone else was thinking. None of them knew. None of them could know.

It’s a gorilla , Conrad thought, but to say those words would be to admit a staggering, impossible truth.

They were closer to the behemoth now, and Conrad began to appreciate its true size and power. It was a mass of muscle and anger, fury emanating from it in waves, and why not? They had been bombing its territory, after all. As they approached, it threw the wrecked helicopter aside like a child discarding a broken toy.

Then it turned to face them.

“Shut up and fire!” Packard ordered. Even through the radio, Conrad could hear the sounds of door machine-guns being cocked and readied for the attack.

He pushed past Weaver, feeling able to take action at last, shoving aside the disbelief and letting his survival instinct engage. It had brought him through many situations, mostly whole. He had to trust it now.

At the cockpit he started to shout, “Don’t engage! Pull out! Tell everyone to pull out!”

“Ignore that man!” Packard shouted. “We’re going in to rescue our downed men, and we need cover.”

Conrad leaned between the pilot and co-pilot and searched down towards the crash site. A Huey hovered, a man lowered down on a rope. He dropped the last few feet and raced towards the crashed chopper.

“Move fast!” Packard called. “Hurry.”

“Yeah, hurry,” Conrad said quietly, because he’d already seen what was about to happen.

The giant beast seemed to crumble like a falling cliff as it bent down low and brought its fisted right hand down onto the crashed copter, the survivors, and the man who’d gone to rescue them.

He’d seen many men killed before, but never wiped from existence like that. Crushed to a smear. Swept away with a flick of a hand.

“Fox Leader to Group,” Packard’s voice came, low and steady. “Cleared hot. Fire at will. I say again… fire at will!” A pause, and then behind his own firing weapons they heard Packard mutter, “You son of a bitch.”

The open radio channels were suddenly filled with the rat-rat-rat of heavy machine-gun fire as the .50s opened up. Hueys swung into attack, and Conrad had to grip the seat backs as his own aircraft swung down and around, door gunner opening up.

He looked back at Weaver. She had her left hand wrapped in a ceiling strap, right hand nursing the camera as she clicked off photos. She caught his eye and stared, wide-eyed. Neither of them knew what to say, even if they could hear each other above the cacophony.

Conrad turned around again, just in time to see the beast leap aside from the gunfire, agile and fast considering its unbelievable size.

“Colonel, pull left, we’re going to—” someone shouted, and then two Hueys attacking from different directions struck each other a glancing blow. These were experienced, battle-hardened pilots, but the situation had stolen their caution and concentration.